


Lore

by TradingJack



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Gen, I also don't really know what beta reading is? it sounds like editing done by a second party, I don't usually write often so I don't really expect this to get any traction, I'm also not super familiar with the Star wars deep lore or anything lol, This started while I was watching the season 1 finale, and a bit of homesickness I guess. Or not really, anyway it hasn't been done lol, just a fun little thing, just random inspiration, more just like wow I wish I had a mom who loved me lol, plz enjoy, wow we oversharing already huh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22487755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TradingJack/pseuds/TradingJack
Summary: A very short original work based on the Disney+ show "The Mandalorian." Takes place before the events of the show.
Kudos: 3





	Lore

"Another rotation, and I just might off myself."

They couldn't see under the helmet; had never seen under the helmet. Of course, that was expected. That was the Way, after all, and all Mandalorians were never seen by living things once initiated. Until they retired, of course. Or were killed.

Outsiders would say the helmet didn't really matter; that Mandalorians would make it obvious what they were feeling anyway.

The longer they lived, the more and more they knew it was true.

The other, also a Mandalorian, constantly reminded them of this thing outsiders would say, as even with her helmet on, it was easy to tell what she was feeling.

"A rotation of planet, or a rotation around the sun?" she snorted. 

"You'll find out tomorrow," they replied. 

She chuckled, shaking her head and returning to the task at hand. "Come now, Lore. If you are to learn how to make armor, you must learn the process." A sizzle as a tiny piece of metal was extracted from ore and tossed into the forge. "All of the process."

"Not if I die tomorrow," they grumbled back, stabbing their own piece of ore with the extracting tongs. A bit of rock flew into their visor, and they flinched.

They flinched again at her tone. "Lore. Stop it."

"Sorry, mom." They sullenly turned their ore over and carefully picked at a vein.

A few more sporadic sizzlings spread over the silence that followed.

"... Listen. Lore. I know this is tedious work, but--"

"I know, it saves liv--"

"Don't interrupt." 

They abruptly shut up.

"As I was saying," she continued, picking the ore apart to reveal a large vein of the metal they were looking for. "This is tedious work. And you are right, it saves lives. But that is not the most important thing we do."

Lore dropped their tongs. "What?" 

"You are right in that it saves lives, but it's not the most important thing we do. Stop being dramatic, Lore, keep working," she snapped, tossing a sizable chunk in the forge and standing up.

"Wha--hey, what are you doing?" they protested, now dropping the ore as well. It landed on the table with a resounding thunk.

"Taking a break."

"Why do I--"

"Until you catch up with me on years of doing this sort of work, you will keep working when I say so," she interrupted. She had crossed the room by this point, and taken a canteen of water. They grumbled and picked up the ore and tongs, chipping away at the metal bits.

"I won't be long," she said, walking out of the room.

"Sure thing, old lady," Lore muttered.

"My age has not caught up with me yet," came a reply from the other room.

"Says the 100 year old woman!" Lore yelled back, before continuing to grumble under their breath. They ended up fishing out all the metal from both chunks of ore before she came back.

. . .

It was incredible how little the helmet hid. Lore could see more and more behind it every day.

She was strangely desperate.

"Do not take this bounty, Lore," she said. Her voice was strangled, despite her best efforts. Lore decided then that all Mandalorians must be terrible at hiding any emotions. It was weird for outsiders to be right.

"I'll be fine. This is the hundredth bounty I've taken just this rotation," they replied, scratching their chin under the helmet. They made a mental note to buy more chafing oil before they left.

"It's cursed. A cursed bounty. Everything about it is bad!" she burst in a fit of frustration, and punched the nearby wall, dangerously close to an electric outlet.

"Mom, please," they sighed.

"Don't take this bounty! Are there no others you could do?" she snapped.

"Not off this planet, no," they replied. "And everything here isn't worth anyone's time."

"Oh?" she said. If they could see her face, they imagined one eyebrow would be cocked. 

"Would you like to take a 20 credit bounty because someone got angry at someone else over a spilled drink?" they replied.

Her shoulders sagged, and she slumped against the wall without a word. They could not see her visor.

They sighed again. "Look... I didn't take it alone." She looked up. "Ian is coming with me."

"He is?" she said.

"Yes. I need a ship to get offworld, anyways, and we're splitting the reward fairly," they reassured her.

Now she sighed, and put her helmet in her hands. "Well, it makes me happier to hear you are not attempting this alone. However..." She looked at Lore, and they felt like neither of them were wearing helmets. "You should never let your guard down. Not on this bounty."

"I don't--"

"I mean it, Lore. You do not want to make a mistake on this mission. You want to keep your head straight." She paused. "And remember what you keep."

They stared, sure the both of them were making eye contact despite the helmets.

"Uh, yeah. Of course," they replied, moving towards the exit. "How could I ever forget?"

She didn't move as they left to buy supplies for the bounty.

. . . 

"Best leave sooner rather than later. It's a pain in the ass, getting around all those damned Stormtroopers." They weren't a huge fan of all the talking, but Ian knew what he was doing, and he had a starship.

They simply grunted their acknowledgement, and continued to do so as Ian kept talking.

"I wonder if we'll ever find peace with Stormtroopers. Armorer talks all the time about how the Jedi were so much worse, blah blah, but I don't know."

They stopped acknowledging Ian as he kept talking. Incredibly, Ian appeared to notice it.

"Oh. I'm sorry, Lore, I know she's your mom. I've just heard a lot of things, I guess."

"Yes, I feel like I'm hearing them all now," they griped.

"Ha, no, you haven't heard anything like I have yet!" Ian exclaimed, slapping them on the shoulder. They stumbled a little and shrugged it off, but Ian either pretended not to notice or actually didn't notice. Either option at this point was just dandy. "I have so much to tell you! You're in the armory all the time, we never get to talk!"

"That's true," they replied in an accidental monotone.

"I'm so excited to talk to you! Oh, man, have I ever told you about the incident that I saw on Alderaan? There was a senator, some musicians, and--"

"How about you tell me on the trip?" They quickly interrupted before Ian could get too into it.

"Oh, yeah, we'll have plenty of time. I don't remember the planet's name, but it's on the other side of the Outer Rim, isn't it?"

"Yep. The star system is unnamed, so the planet is too. But there is some kind of Outpost there with a relatively modern docking bay, and the locals there call the place 'Emyyla.' Shouldn't take too long," they replied. To themselves, they muttered, "with any luck."

It wasn't that they didn't like Ian. He was an excellent warrior, trained in all kinds of combat, and had happily agreed to go out of his way for this bounty with them. He was good for raising morale in large groups. One on one? Not so much. It was worth trudging through the endless talking to fight with Ian anyway. He always honored the Creed and the Way, and Lore knew that Ian couldn't really help how much he talked.

Regardless, compared to the relative silence of their mom, they knew Ian was going to give them a headache before too long.

"Ah! Emyyla, what a nice name. Maybe that's what they'll name the star system," Ian speculated.

"I think the Empire isn't super concerned with officially naming star systems right now," they said, boarding the ship.

Ian clambered on after them, going to the cockpit and talking the whole way. "Well, it's an official government thing they should look into, the planet's getting fairly populated. Good news for our bounty. Or bad, I guess. Depends on the bounty."

"This one's dead," they said, taking the copilot seat. "We'll need to bring back the helmet, but that's it. And then we get paid."

"Ah! Well, collecting bounties isn't just about getting paid. It's about prestige, you know?"

"No, I don't."

Oftentimes admitting you don't know something is a good thing. However, Ian was the type to fill you in fully about whatever it was you didn't know, and Ian went off on three or four tangents in one thought. He talked the ears off of anyone in a twenty foot radius, so much so that they both got through Imperial customs a lot faster than they were used to. They were glad one of the functionalities of the helmet they wore by Creed was noise reduction. That function was meant for blasters and other gun fire, but Lore found it worked just as well on Ian.

. . .

Emyyla was certainly a backwater planet despite Ian's declaration of its nice name. At least the ship didn't smell like bantha shit. 

"I hate deserts," they grumbled.

"At least they're warm. I'd prefer this over freezing my helmet off," Ian said. 

"And would you sirs like to order anything while you're sitting here?" a waitress asked without looking at either mandalorian, her eyes staring distantly at the holopad before her. She kindly left "taking up space" out of her question.

"Just water," they muttered, at the same time as Ian ordered, "I'll take the 1/2 pound roast, synthetic greens without the toasted breads, the sweet soup, and also some water, everything but the water to go, please."

Lore sheepishly collected both menus and nodded when the waitress asked if both of them would like straws.

"Alright, to business," Ian started, leaning over the table. "What exactly is the target?"

"A false mandalorian," they said. "One who existed before the Empire, but does not follow the Way."

"Oh, from Mandalore?" Ian said.

"I think so. But this one isn't associated with the government on that planet, at least not anymore, and the bounty is placed by the Empire."

"Oh wow. I wonder what this bastard did to cost the Empire 100,000 credits," Ian speculated, nodding his thanks at the waiter as she brought them both water with bendy straws. He took a drink from the water before continuing, "that's worth almost as much as a Jedi."

"I don't know," they replied. "Maybe it's personal."

"Maybe. It looked like the bounty came from a Moff or something. I guess it doesn't matter, we just do the job and be done with it." Ian nodded his thanks at the waiter again as she plonked a plastic food box in front of him. "Have you fought another mandalorian before?"

"Uh, sure," they said.

"I meant fought to the death, Lore."

They were silent.

"Hey, it's okay. I just want you to be prepared. If you don't come back from this, your mom might put a bullet through my helmet, you know." He paused. "She loves you a lot."

"I know," they said.

"Anyway," Ian continued, "I doubt this guy is any joke, so we have to make some sort of plan. I want to be going home in the next rotation." Taking another drag through his straw, Ian set the box of food on the floor and took a map out from his pack, spreading it out on the table.

Between the two of them, Lore thought, this fake mandalorian bastard was going to have a tough time living through the next day.

. . . 

Tracking fobs always seemed strange to them. They weren't exactly sure how they worked, but they certainly made things hard for the bounty. On a planet with only one relatively small outpost, tracking down the building their bounty was in was a piece of cake.

Ian was incredibly stealthy when he wanted to be. If they hadn't known better, they wouldn't know Ian was even around when they knocked on the front door.

The bounty lived in squalor. It was a little strange to them that a life worth so much was living like a desert scavenger. Of course, that was most of the town; sand and ghosts, the hopes that something valuable was out in the desolate landscape fading with the distant sun when the hope wasn't drying up in its harsh rays.

They always had to remind themselves that it didn't matter. They figured thinking too much was their biggest problem when it came to the hunt.

It paid, and they were putting down dishonor to the Way. That was all that mattered.

No one answered the door, of course.

They made a quick hand signal at their side, confident Ian would be moving towards the back of the house. Then they waited. 20 seconds... 10... 3, 2, 1...

Down the door went, their padded armor keeping their shoulder from feeling much of the impact, and their blasters were out before the door hit the floor. A crash from behind the back alerted them to Ian breaking in at the same time.

Silence. They breathed in slowly, visor scanning the shitty house the bounty was supposed to be in. They could see Ian on the other side of the house. There was food on the table--

Blaster shots, from the back.

They immediately started to rush towards the shots, hearing Ian shout as he took fire, and shot his heavy crossbow in return--

When Lore rushed in, Ian was pinned by the neck to the wall by a sword. His feet kicked as he choked on his blood, grabbing at the arms of the one who wielded the sword.

The wet gasping was only interrupted by the tracking fob going crazy, shrill beeping piercing the air.

The sword was pulled out of the wall, and the bounty faced them. His helmet was splattered, the visor covered with blood, but Lore knew the bounty could see them perfectly well anyway.

They shot, but it did nothing; the strange, shiny armor this fake mandalorian wore absorbed the bullets with no problem. 

"You dare," the bounty growled. "You dare come for me? You pathetic excuses for mandalorians--"

They screamed then, and flames filled the room.

The bounty cried out, trying to dodge Lore's flamethrower, but catching some flames anyway. The shiny armor was unaffected, but the clothes underneath caught the worst, and Lore screamed again. They pulled out the short vibrosword she gave them, a beautiful work of metal.

The bounty charged at Lore now, yelling back, "you thought you could stand against a real mandalorian?! I, who was there for--" 

Lore desperately defended against the bounty, who was going berserk with his sword. The vibrosword was unable to cut through his weapon, which looked like regular metal.

"--For the Night of a Thousand Tears! The siege! Who lived through Darth Maul's reign over Death Watch, the corrupt governments who've destroyed my home--"

"You're not a real mandalorian!" Lore snarled. "You reveal your face to others. You don't follow the Creed!"

"Creed?" Lore was knocked to the floor, gasping. "That Way is not mandalorian, it's archaic! Nonsensical!"

Lore didn't respond; instead, they managed to kick the sword out from the bounty's hand and scrambled to their feet before tackling the bounty to the floor. 

A surge of strength hit them, and they started bashing the bounty's helmet into the floor, screaming "shut up! Shut up!"

And then they were on their back again.

They received a kick to the ribs as the bounty stumbled away into another room. As quickly as they could, they lurched to their feet again and ran after the bounty.

They caught him in the kitchen, where the bounty was standing next to the window. With a roar, Lore grabbed him and tossed him onto the stove.

The bounty grabbed a kitchen knife and hurled it at Lore's head with enough force to go through the helmet. Lore didn't feel the knife go into their eye, but they could feel it there a split second later and shrieked, unable to express the pain adequately. They barely ducked a kick that would have sent the knife straight through their skull.

As they ducked, they saw through a wild, now one-eyed glance a ruptured gas line on the floor.

They surged up and threw the bounty onto the floor, pinning him down, then grabbed the gas line and shoved it up into his helmet.

The bounty managed to take off his helmet and tried to gasp for air, but Lore took the opportunity and shoved the gas line into his mouth. Using their remaining strength, they managed to keep the bounty in a headlock that forced his mouth shut and used their free hand to pinch his nose closed as well as they could.

The bounty thrashed wildly, his movements becoming more desperate as the minutes ticked by. Lore didn't dare let go, and didn't let go even as the bounty's movements slowed; the glancing blows became weaker and weaker; the eyes closed and the movements stopped; as the bounty stopped breathing, and hung limply in the headlock, jaws locking up and still inhaling the gas line.

Eventually, Lore remembered where they were, and what they were doing. They realized they had been crying, silent tears dripping off of their helmet. The salt of sweat stung around the knife still buried in their face.

Lore didn't dare take out the knife, and knew they needed to get out of the house as soon as possible now. They didn't want to meet the same fate as the body they held. Wrestling the gas line out of the bounty's dead mouth, they ran from the kitchen with the body over their shoulders, careful to take the dead man's helmet with them so they didn't have to enter the room again.

They managed to take the bounty's body and the weapons outside in one trip, and went in the back to quickly retrieve Ian's dead body. They could take care of their own wounds once they recovered Ian from the house.

Taking extra care not to remove Ian's helmet, they first carried Ian back to his starship, then went back to retrieve everything else.

. . .

The burial was harder than anything Lore had done up to that point. Removing another's helmet was so foreign and wrong to Lore, and still felt wrong even though Ian was dead. They almost wanted to blindfold themselves to avoid seeing Ian's face, but curiosity and necessity won out.

Ian looked exactly like Lore thought he would, and at the same time he didn't look anything like how Lore thought he would. Lore quickly shut their eye and striped his armor for recovery, like their mother had taught them, and then gave Ian a proper Mandalorian burial on the outskirts of the outpost. The desert took Ian's body well enough, but it was too silent.

"Well. You'll never be cold," Lore started, but they couldn't talk after that.

The bounty's body was stripped in silence, the body itself left to rot in the open. Lore hoped a bantha would shit on it.

It was strange, flying a starship without needing to keep the helmet on. Every time Lore had traveled, it had been with someone else.

Traveling alone was lonelier than they had thought anything could be.

. . .

"And the starship?" she asked, tossing the last of Ian's armor into the forge. Best to recycle, after all.

"Ian's family didn't want it. I'm keeping it for right now," they replied sullenly. Injuries to the head were the worst, because they could not wear their helmet if they wanted to heal quickly. They had kept it on while she helped them put up a curtain, so when they took it off no one in the room would be able to see their face.

It still felt weird, and of course their face hurt. They knew they had lost an eye permanently in that battle, as well as a friend.

"I see," she said, checking the liquid in the forge. "And this other set of armor?"

"It's the bounty's," they replied. "It resisted multiple point-blank blaster shots, and I could not pierce it with my vibroblade."

They could hear her hum, see her silhouette pick up the shiny chestplate of the bounty. They wondered what she would do with it.

"Do you know what metal this armor uses?" she asked.

"No."

"It's a metal called Beskar. Very rare, and very powerful," she said. "And a treat to work with, if you know what you're doing. The person who made this armor, if it was a person, did not. If they had constructed this armor correctly, this chestpiece would not be dented."

They raised an eyebrow in surprise, flinched, then just muttered, "oh, wow."

They heard her snort.

"Good on you for recycling this armor. Beskar is hard to come by."

"Do we sell it?" they asked.

"No," she said, moving to the high-temperature forge in the middle of the room, which was rarely used. She turned it on and stuck the bounty's Beskar armor inside. "We reforge this armor correctly and use it."

They sat up straight in their shock. "Really?"

"Of course. It's stronger than the armor we use now, and I can work with it," she said, stirring the now liquid Beskar in the forge. "Why shouldn't we use it?"

They replied, "well, we've always used that regular metal."

She sighed, staring at the melted Beskar.

"Do you know where Beskar is most commonly mined?" she asked.

Lore nodded their head, then remembered the curtain and replied, "No."

"The largest source of Beskar is on the planet Mandalore." She must have known Lore was going to say something, because she continued quickly. "Now, you know the history of the planet Mandalore, though neither of us hail from it, and we have no real connection to it. Mandalorians existed well before the planet Mandalore ever did."

Lore sighed and sat back against the wall. It was going to be a lecture, then. At least her lectures weren't nearly as long as some of the other mandalorians' lectures tended to be, and they would take getting lectured by her more than anyone else. It was still a pain to be unable to walk out.

"And you know some of our ancient ancestors decided it was a good idea to settle down, become more 'official' in the eyes of outsiders as a race. Why they felt this, we will never know. But it was their decision to make. And this separation led to a massive change in the way things worked for some mandalorians."

"Why are you telling me this?" Lore asked.

"Because, my child," she said, "do you really believe that in all that time, our Way has not changed in some ways either?"

Lore was silent as they thought about the question. It was something they had never really thought about.

"I... I believe some things have stayed the same throughout everything," they eventually replied, though they were sure she had picked up on the uncertainty in their voice.

"Nothing stays the same that long," she said, now moving to form something out of the melted Beskar in the forge. "Change is the only constant in this universe."

Lore sat there, trying to process what she was telling them. "Why are you telling me this?" they asked. "You didn't really answer."

"Because you said we should stick with the old material, the old ways," she said. "But that is not how things should be. We should always look for change, especially when it benefits us. The only way to honor the Way is to keep moving forward on it, yes? Just like our ancestors did, to get us where we are today." She paused. "That bounty of yours... He was with Death Watch, was he not?"

"He said something about that, yes," Lore sighed.

"Death Watch was attempting to bring back the old ways on Mandalore. They are all dead now." She poured metal into a mold, and started to craft the metal into something new. "Isn't it strange how things work out that way?"

Lore thought about all she had said while she worked on the Beskar armor she was crafting.

"... You knew the bounty was from this Death Watch before I went, didn't you?"

They could see her nod through the curtain, against the bright light of the forges.

"Why didn't you tell me this then?"

"I wish I could have, but it wouldn't have stopped you from going. And besides," she said, sticking a newly forged part into the water. Steam rose up, clouding her image a little, as she took the piece out and continued working on it. "We needed the money."

"Yeah, that makes me feel better about this whole situation," they grunted, leaning further against the wall.

"You'll feel better soon. I gave you that bacta juice, didn't I?" she dismissed them.

"I lost an eye. Bacta can't recover that. I don't have depth perception anymore," they groaned.

She snorted. "Best get better with that short vibroblade I made you then, eh?"

. . .

Sometimes they forgot how incredible she really was at her craft. With copious amounts of bacta and resting, they were able to walk around with their helmet again, and mostly watched her make incredible armor out of the recycled Beskar. Any help they offered really was minimal.

Despite this, she fitted the armor for them, custom one-eyed helmet and all.

The use of Beskar armor became common for their little mandalorian enclave; those that operated on bounties and the like started asking to be paid in Beskar, just so she would make them armor out of the material. She made it because they earned the material.

Lore started to make a lot of the armor, too. Sometimes she said that they had become better at working with Beskar than she was. They knew it wasn't true, but they had become very competent, and the others couldn't often tell who had crafted their armor between Lore and the Armorer.

Lore also gave up using blasters of any kind, being unable to really aim properly, and found that they preferred using vibroblades, anyway.

Lore grew so much that they ended up outgrowing their enclave, and became restless.

She caught them stocking up on provisions and supplies for a very long trip.

"Is it time?" she asked.

"Oh," they said, looking over their shoulder. She probably knew they weren't expecting to be caught, least of all by her. They realized how stupid that had been, of course she would know.

"I guess so," they answered, finishing up their task and turning to face her.

"I remember when you were so little. Before you took up the Way, you were just a youngling, you couldn't fend for yourself. Now look at you," she sighed, and looked at the ground. "Unrecognizable."

"Is that a bad thing?"

"No. Of course not, I'd be concerned if you were still a youngling. I'm happy for you."

"You don't sound happy."

She inhaled for a long time, clearly trying to find words. They knew how rare this was; she always had words, for everything. When she spoke, it was shaky. "I love you as you are now. I just... I also loved that little youngling."

Her voice cracked, and they moved in and wrapped her in a hug, armor and all, so she wouldn't notice the tears running out of their helmet.

"I love you too," they muttered, unable to hide the fact they were crying anyway.

"Oh, Lore." She sighed and pulled out of the hug, but held their helmet against hers. It was another time that, despite their helmet, they were sure the both of them were making direct eye contact. They had never seen her eyes, but they could feel how intense her stare was, how piercing her gaze must be.

"Remember, all those years ago, when we were chipping away at ore stones? You got angry."

"And you gave me a lecture. Yes, I remember," they said, sniffling.

"I told you that saving lives was not the most important thing either of us will do. Do you remember that?"

They almost nodded, but didn't want to break that eye contact. "Yes. I'm still confused by that."

They heard her chuckle. "Well, when you leave, I'll probably never see you again, and you know that." They didn't say anything, but they knew it was true. It was a big galaxy with lots of work to be done, after all. "When you leave, you must know. The most important thing we do.”

. . .

When Lore left the next week, it wasn't with any particularly big fanfare. They said goodbye to everyone, leaving no loose ends behind. That included her, and she made sure they knew they weren't leaving her behind; they were just moving forward.

It was only natural.

She fixed up and polished their armor and weapons before they left as a parting present, and they were surprised the next day to see how clean the starship was now. They felt like, while the starship had been a group effort, no one had gotten to leave until she had been satisfied.

She was the only one to see them off as they boarded their starship.

"Have you thought about what I told you?" she asked.

They just nodded. It seemed like such a simple idea, but really, it was all anyone could do. It was easy to forget anyway, and something some people never learned. They knew the only reason they hadn't really realized it sooner was, ironically, because of her, in a way. This was not her fault.

"What do you think?" she followed up.

Instead of sharing everything, they just said, "you're right." They laughed a little. "Of course you're right."

They knew she was smiling under the helmet, but she just nodded. "Good."

They boarded the ship finally, after hugging her one last time. As they took off, they saw her waving, and managed to wave back quickly as they navigated into space and beyond, ready for whatever they would face next.

They didn't see the tears running out of her helmet. They didn't hear her whisper, "Good bye, Lore. I love you." 

But they knew, and that was enough.


End file.
